'Poor English saved Japan's banks from crisis'

Japan's banks emerged from the global credit crisis largely unscathed because
managers did not speak English well enough to have got them into trouble,
the country's finance minister has claimed.

Taro Aso, Japan's finance minister and former prime minister, said bankers in Japan had not been able to understand the complex financial instruments that were the undoing of major global players, so had not bought them.Photo: Bloomberg News